Messages - cs_rudy

I work at a large corporate firm and the transactional attorneys routinely work on billion dollar contracts under immense time pressure. People do tend to romanticize legal work, but don't think that just because you've heard something about the legal profession a thousand times it isn't true.

Additionally, would you mind taking the time to read your posts after you post them and take out the spelling and grammar errors? Even the CR in your post has a fatal error. It says left when it should say right.

The reason that answer choice C is incorrect is because the proportion of Bicycle-Automobile collisions to Bicycle-Anything Else collisions is completely peripheral to the stimulus and the question stem.

This proportion is irrelevant because the author is trying to prove something within the Automobile-Bicycle collision subgroup. Thus, B is correct because it addresses the arguments shortcoming. Namely: How can we know if you are at higher risk on one side or the other if we only have percentages from one side.

"Here's a little background about me. I was always one of the smartest kids in my high school and did all the things I needed to do to get into law school. I got a 161 on my LSAT which is the top 14% of test-takers."

This is when I stopped reading.

You generalize that I should not go to law school from the fact that you have not met with great success. Why should I care? Your experiences are not analogous to mine and your goals are obviously very different, so why should I decide not to do anything because of your shortfalls.

It sucks that law school didn't live up to your expectations, but to claim that no one should go to law school on that basis is utterly ridiculous.

Let me illustrate with a hypo:

Say I went to law school three years ago, graduated at the top of my class, and am now working at a prestigious law firm in a big city and making beau-coup bucks. I have managed to invest my money well and I've paid off my loans and drive a nice sports car and live in a condo-with-a-view downtown. I am quickly becoming one of the most respected Mid-Level associates and am on track to make partner in the next few years.

Would you go to law school on the basis of the information above? I hope not. Just as I hope no one who reads your post decides not to go to law school because YOU had a bad experience.

I too had trouble with flaw questions. I overcame my troubles in three ways:

1) I read the Logical Reasoning Bible's chapter on flaw questions and memorized all of the flaws therein. If you want to get even crazier you can go to wikipedia and look at their list of fallacies. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this, however, because there are many fallacies that haven't appeared as answers on LSATs and are not likely to appear on your test.

2) I classified every single answer choice on flaw questions with a one word descriptor. For example I would take "the argument attacks the source of the claim rather than his contentions" and classify it as "source fallacy" or "ad hominem". Both mean the same thing; to attack the person instead of his argument. After doing this many times, you begin to know which fallacy each answer choice is talking about and if it applies to the stimulus.

3) Finally, I rephrased the argument abstractly. I don't know how to explain to you how to phrase the argument abstractly. For me, it just happened one day and I think it is the easiest way to spot a flaw because it simplifies the argument tremendously.

Games continue to be my weakest area on the LSAT. I went from not taking enough time to set up the diagram, to taking too much. Thus, my first question is: How much time should I take setting up the diagram before moving on to the questions? Obviously I am not looking for an absolute number as all games are different. But at what point do you force yourself to move to the questions so that you don't waste valuable time chasing unnecessary inferences?

My second question relates to overall games difficulty. I heard that in the past the games were much harder than they are now. Unfortunately this sentiment bears no meaning unless values are attached to "the past". When did games start getting easier? And what is easier about them? (If they are in fact, easier).

I completely agree. I always post all five answer choices verbatim from the exam. Like another poster said, I'm not just trying to help the OP figure out why the credited response is right, I'm trying to see if I can answer the question myself. When there are only one or two answer choices posted with a stimulus, it does not even come close to approximating actually trying to answer a question.

In addition, I always post the correct answer after the original post. I've found that often times people who try and answer the questions I've posted get them wrong and they can use their attempt at explaining the question wrongly to learn something about their reasoning.

How do we know that because committees have been successful in the past they will continue to be successful in the future? How do we know that the committees in Sweden and Canada aren't more successful than those that would be implemented in the United States (according to the correct answer choice)?

The premises said themselves: "In all three countries, joint labor-management committees that oversee workplace safety conditions have been very successful in reducing occupational injuries." So we already know theyre successful. But we also know that, while successful, theyre hardly utilized in the US. If the US were to utilize them more frequently, the # of injuries would decrease. If youre still confused put down your answer and I'll knock it out for you.

Read what I wrote. The premises do not say the programs will be successful. They do not say anything about the future. We have to assume that. I don't see how we know they will be successful based on the fact that they have been successful. Maybe this is just a misinterpretation of the English language, but I didn't think it was proper to assume that because something has been successful it will continue to be successful. In fact, I thought this was fallacious reasoning.

Further explanation on the last one would be helpful. I also focused on the fact that conviction requires indictment, which led me to the conclusion that (E) Contains premises that cannot all be true was correct. The two premises regarding percentages cannot both be true because one of them must include the other. What am I missing here?